Asilah

On 24 August 1471 King Afonso V of Portugal landed in a storm with some 30,000 men and took Asilah from the Wattasids after a hard fight; the garrison of Tangier, hearing the news, abandoned their town four days later. The Portuguese held Asilah for nearly eighty years. They beat off two sieges by the Sultan of Fez in 1508 and 1509, then rebuilt the citadel and harbour wall with modern bastions and a tall keep, and in 1520 opened a royal trading post that drew Moroccan and Jewish merchants with silks, cloth, and spices. The stronghold could not stand against the rising Saadians, and in 1550 John III had the town evacuated by sea. The Portuguese came back only once more, when King Sebastian landed here in 1578 for the campaign that ended in his death, and in 1692 Moulay Ismail brought Asilah back under Moroccan rule.